Monday, January 26, 2009

Industrial Indianapolis

Indianapolis has many interesting old rust belt relics. I'm already naturally interested in scenes like this, but it does open a door into Indianapolis' past.

Old grain elevator on Sherman Drive and Raymond Street. I found this place to look much more appealing in back and white.

Indianapolis Coke Plant on Prospect Street. I don't know exactly when this place is to be dismantled, but I thought I would take some shots of it before it disappears.

Looking down Prospect Street to the Indianapolis Coke Plant.

A CSX train slowly groans it's way through downtown.

West Washington Street and Tibbs Ave.

Thermal Plant on Kentucky Avenue. These look much better in color.

Belmont Avenue.

Alright sun, give me all the long wave EM radiation you have, to melt this ice!

Large beams protruding though pine trees, this of course caught my attention.

Closer look.

Also on Belmont Avenue.

The Urbanophile recently did an excellent post about sidewalks just like this one; this configuration may work in munchkin land, but I'm 6'4", and dude, this is just not cool. Taken on Sherman Drive, near Raymond Street.

Yours truly battling the local flora. Think the look on my face is too dramatic? This was taken right after I got bitch slapped across the face by a tree branch with potential energy courtesy of my own hand.

9 comments:

Simplest solution is just get some clippers yourself and cut the branches back, What is the sense in hoping some public agency will move three layers of bureaucracy costing who knows how many $$ to get the job done the wrong way anyway. If you look at your post of Dec. 26 the pic "Access to the crosswalk from Madison Ave.", I encountered these steps a couple years ago. They were completely impassible with vegetation. I went and got some clippers and cut it back, now it is functional. Be careful on the other side of the pedestrian bridge though, that is mostly poison ivy.

I made a comment about the waterfall on Pleasant Run back with your January 5th post but I s'pose you missed it. You were right there when you took that shot of the coke plant across Prospect. From that exact spot you were standing to take that pic walk over to the creek and take a look.

Having people help maintain sidewalks in their own neighborhoods is an interesting concept. I do believe however, as a collective city, we need to develop much more civic pride for this to work a grand scale; Indianapolis has a tendency to be weak in that department. Thanks for the tip about the poison ivy, I'm so allergic to anything containing urushiol, that any significant exposure would lead to a possible hospital visit :(

I did see and take some shots of the waterfall you speak of on Prospect and Pleasant Run while taking the Indianapolis Coke pictures. I already have them committed to a future post that I will most likely finish next week, so thanks for both tips!

I'm not sure I'd lump grain elevators in with Rust Belt relics. Elevators like those are indicative of our argricultural past -- not related to industrial or manufacturing sites at all. Grain elevators similar to that those are still in operation in nearly every small and mid-size town in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, and even Indiana. Great pics!

Thanks everyone for your comments! I did definitely take some liberties combining the agrarian with the industrial, but I couldn't resist the temptation of using those pics that I shot earlier that day :)

There's a danger in getting too cookie cutter clean with what we do with the land. I always liked this passage. It's about small towns but it works for the city too. We need a few cracked sidewalks and tunnels in the brush.

Different things move us. I, David Kern, am always affected -- reassured, nostalgically pleased, even, as a member of my animal species, made proud -- by the sight of bare earth that has been smoothed and packed firm by the passage of human feet. Such spots abound in small towns: the furtive break in the playground fence dignified into a thoroughfare, the trough of dust underneath each swing, the blurred path worn across a wedge of grass, the anonymous little mound or embankment polished by play and strewn with pebbles like the confetti aftermath of a wedding. Such unconsciously humanized intervals of clay, too humble and common even to have a name, remind me of my childhood, when one communes with dirt down among the legs, as it were, of presiding fatherly presences. The earth is our playmate then, and the call to supper has a piercingly sweet eschatological ring.

About Me

The content I bring to the G+ table is my photography, which is primarily focused in urban areas all over the United States, but mostly where I live in New York City. The primary goal of my photography is an attempt to derive artistic value from what most would perceive to be mundane urban minutiae. I am completely fascinated by that which is most ubiquitous and what most people just accept as their grime filled surroundings.